MINT. (Or not.)

[Primrose]

I'm wondering if mint has the capacity to suffer from Sudden Death Syndrome.
Last year I had a healthy thrivinng mint bed. This year the soil is is as barren as a dessert and any old mint stalks I pull up from last year are dry and dead . This is the swcond time in about ten years this has happened to me.
Does mint suffer from any specific disease which causes this?
Will I be safe planting new plants in the same spot? i really don't have any other space in which to plant themand ai use too much to try growing it in a pot or trough.

[PLUMPUDDING]

My mint bed didn't die completely, but looked very sparse. I gave it a good watering, some Growmore, a top dressing of compost and a good handful of slug pellets and it eventually revived. It looks much better this year but still keeps getting slug damage if I don't keep putting pellets round it.

I don't know about sudden death but the slugs were eating off all new growth and a lot of the bed was just dry stalks, or do you think your mint bed might have been too dry.

[Pawty]

I have a couple of types of mint in one huge pot - maybe 6 years old? I find that they compete with the common mint taking over and the black mint (Moroccan ) suffering. The Moroccan mint (makes great tea) was a cutting from my mother in law, who then killed hers off, which I then replaced with a cutting from mine. So every year I take a few cuttings, put them in a glass of water, wait for roots and pot on. If mine and my mother in laws survive I give them away to colleagues. Seems to work well.

Every year, I give the mint a top dressing, which it loves.

The main problems I find are 1) slugs. 2) spiders (love to make nests in the top) 3) caterpillarS (again nests/sticky cocoons in the top of each shoot). 4) white fly on the cuttings.

It's odd that all of yours died though. I've killed one in a pot because I forgot to water it, but that doesn't sound the case with yours. Odd.

This years new addition is a grapefruit mint ..... Especially for Pimms o clock!

Pawty

[Johnboy]

Hi Primrose,
Earlier on in the year here we suffered quite a prolonged drought condition and my mint was not progressing as I thought it should be,
I gave the bed a very severe watering and waited to see signs of progress. Within a week it was behaving more in the normal pattern
and had the first picking for new potatoes (bought-in) last night. So apart from watering I did nothing and my only conclusion is that mint needs plenty of water in the formative months. I never feed mint with anything but I water quite regularly though.
JB.

[Primrose]

Thanks for that feedback Johnboy. That may have been the cause although the patch was watered regularly throughout the year. Had a ferret around and even the underground shoots I found which noemally would be "alive" seemed to be dried up snd dead.

I have bought some more today and was surprised just how many different varieties of mint there are now are .
i sniffed a very unusual chocolate variety which did indeed taste of chocolate but I cannot even begin to
imagine eating that with new potatoes and a nice joint of roast lamb..
Personally I don't think you can beat the old fashioned "ordinary" garden mint variety but it was quite hard to find any amongst all
the fancy "flavoured" varieties. Thyme seems to be another herb where there are myriad varieties to choose from.